mafalda

The classic soft Sicilian bread with a golden crumb, made with finely milled durum semolina flour and always topped with nutty sesame seeds. Sicilian food historians believe it was invented in the 19th century in a bakery in Palermo, perhaps as a re-interpretation of an Arabian era bread.

When the recipe reached Catania in the early 20th century, another baker named it after Princess Mafalda of Savoy (1902–44) the second daughter of King Vittorio Emanuele III, who married Prince Philipp of Hesse, a member of the Nazi party; the Nazis always suspected her of being against the war and sent her to Buchenwald, where she died after being wounded in an Allied bombing. But her name lives on in the bread and in the pasta, mafaldine.

The bread is usually shaped in a twist as in the picture, but it also can also be shaped like an S, and known as occhi di Santa Lucia.